She rises often, often drops again, And sports at ease on the tempestuous main. Far back, then turn and all their force apply, Darkness begins to reign; the louder wind A seaman's body: there'll be more to-night!' AN ENTANGLEMENT. [From Tales of the Hall.] [The following is an extract from one of the Tales of the Hall, entitled 'Delay has Danger.' A young man, who is happily engaged to be married, finds himself, during a visit in a friend's house, partly through his own weakness and folly, partly through the cunning designs of others, compromised in his relations with a girl of inferior station and insignificant attractions. The dialogue that ensues is between the unwilling lover and the girl's ado, ted parents, who are upper servants in his host's house, and who, having brought about the entanglement, now affect to encourage the lover in his timid advances] 'An orphan maid—your patience! you shall have Fanny, dear girl! has in my spouse and me Her mother's father, one who has a store 'Pardon! good my friend I not alone will pardon, I commend ; Think you that I have no remembrance left Of youthful love and Cupid's cunning theft? How nymphs will listen when their swains persuade, 'In mercy hear me now!' 'I cannot hear you, time will not allow : You know my station, what on me depends, And here comes one who will the whole explain, 'Then be entreaty made To her, a woman, one you may persuade; A little teasing, but she will comply, And loves her niece too fondly to deny.' 'O! he is mad, and miserable I!' Exclaimed the youth; 'but let me now collect The thing! but man will tease you, if he loves. And cannot bear to have her temper stirred;— Then, first debating, we agreed at last To seek my Lord and tell him what had passed' 'To tell the Earl?' 'Yes truly, and why not? And then together we contrived our plot.' 'Eternal God!' 'Nay be not so surprised, In all the matter we were well advised; We saw my Lord, and Lady Jane was there, But in the higher places so are they; We are obeyed in ours and they in theirs obey- That evening all in fond discourse was spent When the sad lover to his chamber went, To think on what had passed, to grieve and to repent Where the rough wind alone was heard to move, When now the young are reared, and when the old Far to the left he saw the huts of men, Took their short flights and twittered on the lea; WILLIAM BLAKE. [WILLIAM BLAKE was born in London at No. 28, Broad Street, Golde Square, on the 28th November 1757; he died in Fountain Court, Strand, on the 12th of August, 1827. His Poetical Sketches were published in 1783, and the Songs of Innocence in 1787. In 1787 was also published The Book of Thel; and this was followed in 1790 by The Marriage of Heaven and Heil, in 1791 by The French Revolution, and in 1793 by The Gates of Paradise, the Visions of the Daughters of Albion, and the America. The Songs of Experience, designed as a companion series to the earlier Songs of Innocence, were issued in 1794Of the later productions of the poet nearly all belonged to the c'ass of prophetic books. To the year 1794 belong the Europe and The Book of Urizen; in 1795 appeared The Song of Los and The Book of Abania, and in 1804 the Jerusalem and the Milton.] The poetry of Blake holds a unique position in the history of English literature. Its extraordinary independence of contemporary fashion in verse, and its intuitive sympathy with the taste of a later generation, would alone suffice to give a peculiar interest to the study of the poet's career. Nor is this interest in any way diminished by a knowledge of Blake's singular and strongly marked individuality. Indeed, it is scarcely possible to do justice to the great qualities of his imagination, or to make due allowance for its startling defects, unless the exercise of the poetic gift is considered in relation to the other faculties of his mind. He appealed to the world in the double capacity of poet and painter; and such was the peculiar nature of his endowment and the particular method of his work, that it is difficult to measure the value of his literary genius without some reference to his achievements in design. For it is not merely that he practised the two arts simultaneously, but that he chose to combine them after a fashion of his own. An engraver by profession and training, he began at a very early age to employ his technical knowledge in the invention of a wholly original system of literary publication. With the exception of the Poetical Sketches, issued in the ordinary form through the kindly help of friends, nearly all of Blake's poem! |